After all, Tim Callaghan was a politic fellow; and these three tunes were expressly chosen and learnt to win the ears and suffrages of all denominations of Christian men. Thus, the “Boyne water” is the propitiatory sacrifice at the Protestant’s door, “Patrick’s Day” at that of the Roman Catholic, and when he is not sure of the creed of the party he wishes to conciliate, to suit Quakers, Methodists, Seekers, and _Jumpers_, “God save the Queen” is the third. For many years he was contented to give these favourite airs in their original purity; but some wicked wight--a gentleman piper, I suspect--has at last persuaded him that his melody would be altogether irresistible if he would introduce some ornamental _variations_, “such as his own fine taste would suggest;” and poor Tim, unaccustomed to flattery, and wholly unsuspicious of the jest, caught at the bright idea, conquered his natural and acquired laziness, and made an attempt. When he thought he had mastered the difficulties, he did me the honour to select me as judge to pronounce on his melodious acquisitions; and all I shall say anent them is, let the blackest hypochondriac that ever looked wistfully at a marl-hole or his garters, listen to Tim Callaghan’s “varry-a-shins,” and watch his face while performing them, and he will require “both poppy and mandragora to medicine him to sleep,” if sleep he ever will again for laughing! When Tim arrives at a gentleman’s door, his usual plan is to commence with the _suitable_ serenade, and drone away at that till the few pence he is piping for sends him away content. But if he is detained long, and he sees no great chance of reward or entertainment within doors, he becomes furious, and in his ire he rattles up that one of the three which he supposes most disagreeable and opposite to the politics of the offender. If the party be a Roman Catholic, he will be unpleasantly electrified, and all his antipathies aroused, by “the Boyne water,” performed with unusual spirit; and if a church-goer, he will never recover the shock of “Patrick’s Day,” given with an energy that will render the wound unhealable! If he is asked for any favourite or fashionable air--and you might as well ask Tim Callaghan to repeat a passage of Homer in the original Greek--his civilest reply is, “I haven’t that, but I’ll give yez one as good,” when one of the _trio_ follows of course; and if the impertinent suitor for novelties in his ignorance persists in demanding more than is to be had, he is angrily cut short, especially if of inferior rank, with “How bad ye are for sortins! Yer masther wud be contint wid what I gave ye, an’ thankful into the bargin!” Thus qualified to please, it is not to be wondered at that he is celebrated through three baronies as “the piper!”